At Sundance, Selfie Sticks Are Weapons

Reporting on Saturday, January 23, 2016, Sundance Film Festival in Utah, Park City, America, the world.

It's snowing in Park City. Chubby flakes that stick only on attractive surfaces like evergreens and hair, but not on the sidewalks. As we wait in an alcove where our photographer is sneaking actors through a trellis situation, a Utah native informs me the sidewalks are heated. I press a bare hand on the concrete, and it's notably tepid. “It’s a fancy place," he says.

When we don’t trail actors through the trellis along warm sidewalks, they are mobbed by people who shout the names of their most notable character. “DARRYL!” a pack of people cries at Craig Robinson. A selfie stick comes down on my shoulder like a machete. “I GOT ONE!” Success: This is it.

You never know when you have a chance to eat. "You have to get it while you can," says a wise colleague about food. Snacks are abundant yet tiny. One actor is ready for my interview as I’ve started into a box of Dots. He’s never tried them, so I insist. Before I can stop him, he takes a green one—which you and I know is a mistake. I tell him he has the misfortune of getting a very bad flavor. He walks away to spit it out. Later, when I ask if he has an “aversion” to something, he thinks I have asked him if he is a virgin. He answers.

Earlier, at 8:30 A.M., watching this actor's movie about a compact and charismatic hound, I sit next to a gently snoring fellow. The movie is called Wiener-Dog, not to be confused with a documentary about Anthony Weiner called Weiner.

We watch it in a converted basketball court. Everything, like in New York, used to be something else. Matt Damon leads a panel discussion in a parking lot with paper walls and a carpet. I know this because I try to lean on a wall and nearly wipe out.

The premiere of White Girl, meanwhile, is in a library. It's a shot-put hurl of a movie from Elizabeth Wood. About a college student who falls hard for her neighbor drug dealer, it’s grounded by an intensely vulnerable, unedited Morgan Saylor. It’s possibly 50 minutes straight of writhing parties and disappearing drugs. After, the lights come up on a couple hundred adults at 10:35 P.M. on a Saturday, sitting quietly in a library. The cast seems to have decided to create a contrast by acting notably bashful. Walking into the premiere party, the ice-cool Brian "Sene" Marc recognizes my friend and politely inquires, “Will you have a drink with us later?” Another actress who, in the movie, ripped lines like her nostrils contained tiny, imploding planets is wearing a high collar and pastels and is very businesslike on her phone.

The ebbs and flows of the transportation costs are fascinating reports on demand. The parking below our hotel changes periodically from $65 to $75 to $85 a day. Guessing the rate of Uber surges is a fun game that has replaced guessing the temperature in New York or L.A. Uber is at a 4.9x surge rate right now, if you guessed that. These are games you invent waiting in the snow to get into whatever you want to get into. By midnight, people waiting are losing their minds. Someone points to a window where partygoers are watching the street. He shouts into the sky: “See, they’re not even having fun! They want to be here! Maybe the line is the party, but they can’t get in because there is no list!”

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